


Heavenly stubble

by SrebrnaFH



Series: Srebrna's Sherlock Oneshots [17]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Established Relationship, Facial Hair, John Watson Loves Sherlock Holmes, M/M, Sherlock Holmes Loves John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 20:14:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18080177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SrebrnaFH/pseuds/SrebrnaFH
Summary: Sherlock had lost a bet and, as a consequence, had spent two weeks sulking in the bedroom.John has had enough.





	Heavenly stubble

**Author's Note:**

> The idea was one of the plot bunnies that popped up after I've seen [this set of photos](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/post/183269456576/talking-about-looks-i-really-like-benedict-with-a).

It was a complicated combination of several different factors.

One easily identified element was the fact that Sherlock had lost a bet. Specifically, it was a bet with John, regarding their house finances.

The rules were easy to follow and the judgement in the hands of Mrs Hudson, who held a detailed tally of their spendings, each new item in the flat carefully submitted with its receipt and written down.

By the end of the month-long competition, John had won by the sheer virtue of not being Sherlock. Sherlock lost, because it was hard to win in frugality contest when one was a posh boy used to wearing silk boxers while your competition was a soldier used to wearing quite common - if occasionally colourful - Y-fronts.

The outcome of that was Sherlock handing over all the budget-related aspects of their household to John, including his own credit cards, the two he had swiped from Mycroft and the one that was supposedly linked to the account holding his trust.

Out of that, John gave him a weekly allowance, but controlled his spending and had managed to compel Sherlock to adhere to the rules - by the expedient of sitting in his chair with a newspaper and declining the invitation to bed issued by his partner, stubbornly waiting until the detective gave him his word that he would not try to work around the limitations set by John and indicated that he understood the reasoning behind the measures introduced.

Which led to Sherlock being more and more frustrated with the world.

Which led to what John called "That Bathroom Incident" (alternative titles were "Melty melty you plastic fiend" and "What you should never pour down the drain at home"), in which most plastic objects in their bathroom dissolved and various elements of the pipe system were blocked by remaining non-plastic pieces of these objects. To which Mrs Hudson reacted with tears and John with grim determination, calculating the repair cost and putting a halt on "frivolous" purchases. Which apparently included buying a new package of disposable razors. Because the ones that Sherlock had kept in the bathroom were victims of said experiment.

The last point was that Sherlock was terrified of straight razors. No, never, he was not going to come close to one. Not with an intention to shave or be shaved. As John quietly enjoyed his morning session with his (wood encased) razor, Sherlock sulked in their bedroom.

For the second week in a row.

After going without a shave for a week, Sherlock had barricaded himself in the bedroom, only coming out when he knew John would not be there. He resolved Lestrade's cases over the phone, working from Anderson's photos and Lestrade's observations, which made him complain loudly to John - through the door only. He ate the meals left out for him by his caring boyfriend and was gone and hidden (usually with a package of biscuits and a pot of tea) by the time John came back.

John took it all in stride, temporarily moving to his old bedroom and deciding to wait out his idiot genius partner, but it was now two weeks and he felt it had been quite enough of _that_.

"Sherlock, you have to come out of there one day," John knocked on the door dividing the bathroom and the bedroom. "Come on, love."

"If you loved me, you would have bought me my razors!" came a muffled answer.

"No, you prat. You deserve to go unshaved for a few days for that crap you pulled. Just until the next month, when the consultancy fee comes from NSY and we can calculate how badly the pipe repair has affected our finances."

"Stupid pipe repair," a mumble this time.

"Well, someone had poured melted plastic into the tub drain and it congealed into an effective plug, blocking the water flow. You should know by now that your chemical experiments don't mesh well with normal household equipment."

"But, John...!"

"Come on, love. You may be a little shaggy, but you've still handsome, I'm sure."

"How can you know?"

John sighed.

"Because I know you, I love you and I _know_ you would be damn sexy and as pretty as you always are even if you dyed your hair orange."

"But John, I..."

He fell silent.

He pushed the door cautiously and entered the darkened room. Of course Sherlock didn't block the bathroom entrance - for convenience of getting easily inside, most probably.

"Up, love," he prodded the lump under the blankets. "You have to go outside at some point. Vitamin D and all that rot."

"Rot," Sherlock agreed politely. "There is nothing outside that could tempt me."

"Mhm. Even if _I_ am outside?"

"You are _here_."

"Temporarily."

"John."

"OK, so _why_ can't you just get up, get dressed and show yourself to the general populace? Many men walk around with a few days worth of beard, noone is going to be very surprised."

"Because I don't grow a _beard_ ," Sherlock mumbled.

"What?"

"My... facial hair. It never produces a beard. Or anything close to it. It grows in stupid little clumps and I look like some victim of a selectively blind barber. What else do you want to know?"

John sat heavily on the edge of the mattress and patted the most prominent part of the blanket lump consolingly.

"I'm sure it's not that bad," he said. "And if it is, I won't make you go outside, but you have to air this room sometimes at least!"

"Everyone always made fun of it," Sherlock sounded defensive now as he wrapped himself tighter in his duvet. "My whole class used to laugh at me."

"Morons," John patted the part he guessed was Sherlock's backside. "Why would they do that?"

"Because I didn't know how to shave myself," his favourite detective informed him morosely. "I skipped two years at school and so when everyone in my year was already growing whiskers, I was still... well, my voice had not yet broken. And then they were all grown up and I, you know... everything kind of exploded, I grew six inches in one year, all my uniforms suddenly stopped fitting, my voice changed and... and..."

"And you had to learn to shave."

"And they all already knew how, but I felt too humiliated to ask anyone, because they were all _older_ than me and _stupid_ and they made fun every time I left something unshaved or I cut myself or, well, anything...!"

It was a real, actual distress that he heard in Sherlock's words.

"What about your father? Mine wasn't much joy to live with, but he taught me how to shave myself without drawing blood at least."

Sherlock sighed.

"It was a boarding school," he finally admitted. "It was _ages_ before I saw my parents - they were on some diplomatic excursion at the time, Father was serving as a cultural attache of some kind and Mummy was being the brains behind the scenes - and I was _so miserable_... Mycroft came to pick me up for Christmas and the headmaster decided to be difficult and didn't want to allow me to leave without a legal guardian present."

"Geez, what a prick."

Sherlock huffed.

"Mycroft went home and came back with a permission slip signed with our father's name - the headmaster had not noticed how fresh the ink was and nobody had ever questioned "Father's" signatures presented by Mycroft, they were perfect - so home I went. The whole holiday week was spent on ensuring I knew how to tame the random growth on my face. My stocking was enhanced with a generous package of disposables - as Mycroft deemed it much safer for me to have a lot of these than the kind of shaver he used, with replacement blades - and shaving cream, so I went back to school trained and equipped appropriately."

John rubbed up and down the long calf he had identified under the coverings.

"So, he isn't such a rubbish older brother after all, is he?"

The grumble from the blanket heap sounded _offended_.

"Come on, love," he cajoled. "Up and let me see. I need to check at least if you hadn't turned into a vampire yet..."

He felt his voice catch a little.

Sherlock was dishevelled, yes.

His curls were a riot.

His cheekbones were as prominent as ever.

Pale green eyes were surrounded by the lightest purple of a bruise - lack of sleep.

Long, nearly gaunt cheeks and jaw were covered with an even, rather dark-reddish-maybe-auburn growth. A beard. A nice, two-week beard that looked incredibly fitting yet at the same time exotic on the younger man's face.

Who immediately scowled and started turning away when John smiled at the rumpled picture he was presented with.

"Sherlock," he climbed the bed and swiftly straddled the lap of his boyfriend before he managed to turn away. "Look at me. Do I look like I'm laughing at you?"

"N-no. But you are smiling."

"That is because you are adorable," John explained while taking a firm hold of his face. "You look rather... fetching," he nuzzled into the soft hair at the corner of Sherlock's jaw and sighed. "And it is very nice. _Very nice_."

"J-John."

"It is almost as fine as the ones here," he trailed his fingers through the hair at Sherlock's nape. "And it feels soo... gooood..."

Sherlock's breathing obviously caught as John's lips caught his earlobe.

"You look positively _edible_ , love," the doctor whispered into the soft shell of his boyfriend's ear. "Distinguished and sophisticated. Like an angel on a run from Heaven, rebelling against the rules - they told you angels were not supposed to play the violin, did they? Made you play a harp, so you've run away and now you're hiding among the mortals..." he pulled himself away from the soft skin of the neck he was nibbling on. "You look like a prime candidate to seduce some mortal hearts, with your fine bones and these luminous eyes and this," his fingertips caressed Sherlock's lower lip. "I'm not sure allowing you to shave this off wouldn't be against some law - you are much too handsome like this."

"Joohn?"

"Whatever your classmates told you and whatever your face looked like when you were a teenager - and I'm sure you were adorable - now you look... enticing."

"Does this mean we have to actually leave?" the younger man sighed, rolling his eyes. "You will enforce obligatory contact with outside world now that it seems I look acceptable to general public, I suppose."

John laughed softly and placed a chaste kiss on his lover's full lips.

"It could actually be dangerous to show you to the world in this state," he murmured. "Who knows what kind of disturbance might a fallen angel cause on the streets of London."

**Author's Note:**

> I am taking a writing course and one of the tasks is to ask my readers to describe my writing style in 3 adjectives. I'd be grateful if you could provide this kind of feedback :)  
> (if you provided it already somewhere else - THANK YOU! :))
> 
>  
> 
> [You can find me on tumblr.](https://srebrnafh.tumblr.com/)  
> [Or visit my blog.](https://fanfik.wordpress.com/)


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